18 USC 48 - Animal crushing

Editorial Notes

Amendments

2019—Puspan. L. 116–72 amended section generally. Prior to amendment, section related to animal crush videos.

2010—Puspan. L. 111–294 amended section generally. Prior to amendment, section related to depiction of animal cruelty.

Statutory Notes and Related Subsidiaries

Severability

Puspan. L. 111–294, § 3(c), Dec. 9, 2010, 124 Stat. 3179, provided that: “If any provision of section 48 of title 18, United States Code (as amended by this section), or the application of the provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the provision and the application of the provision to other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby.”

Findings

Puspan. L. 111–294, § 2, Dec. 9, 2010, 124 Stat. 3177, provided that: “The Congress finds the following:

“(1) The United States has a long history of prohibiting the interstate sale, marketing, advertising, exchange, and distribution of obscene material and speech that is integral to criminal conduct.

“(2) The Federal Government and the States have a compelling interest in preventing intentional acts of extreme animal cruelty.

“(3) Each of the several States and the District of Columbia criminalize intentional acts of extreme animal cruelty, such as the intentional crushing, burning, drowning, suffocating, or impaling of animals for no socially redeeming purpose.

“(4) There are certain extreme acts of animal cruelty that appeal to a specific sexual fetish. These acts of extreme animal cruelty are videotaped, and the resulting video tapes are commonly referred to as ‘animal crush videos’.

“(5) The Supreme Court of the United States has long held that obscenity is an exception to speech protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

“(6) In the judgment of Congress, many animal crush videos are obscene in the sense that the depictions, taken as a whole—

“(A) appeal to the prurient interest in sex;

“(B) are patently offensive; and

“(C) lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

“(7) Serious criminal acts of extreme animal cruelty are integral to the creation, sale, distribution, advertising, marketing, and exchange of animal crush videos.

“(8) The creation, sale, distribution, advertising, marketing, and exchange of animal crush videos is intrinsically related and integral to creating an incentive for, directly causing, and perpetuating demand for the serious acts of extreme animal cruelty the videos depict. The primary reason for those criminal acts is the creation, sale, distribution, advertising, marketing, and exchange of the animal crush video image.

“(9) The serious acts of extreme animal cruelty necessary to make animal crush videos are committed in a clandestine manner that—

“(A) allows the perpetrators of such crimes to remain anonymous;

“(B) makes it extraordinarily difficult to establish the jurisdiction within which the underlying criminal acts of extreme animal cruelty occurred; and

“(C) often precludes proof that the criminal acts occurred within the statute of limitations.

“(10) Each of the difficulties described in paragraph (9) seriously frustrates and impedes the ability of State authorities to enforce the criminal statutes prohibiting such behavior.”